By selection, it is possible on the one hand (as Deutsch by his eloquence has done,) to present the Talmud as the wisest and noblest of human writings; and on the other hand, by gathering together all that is most worthless and displeasing in its pages, it is equally possible to hold it up to execration and contempt. In this respect it is an epitome of human nature, and a book of confessions' of the Jewish nation. Its power lies, however, in the greatness of the lessons of patience, humility and faith, which were taught by the leaders of the nation to the people, in the days of bondage and oppression; and its denunciations were often merited by those who persecuted the Jew.

Extravagance and hyperbole are so natural to the Oriental that they must not be judged by Western standards of taste. If an over-weening conceit characterises the utterances of many of the Rabbis, it is possible that these might be paralleled much nearer home, in the dicta of our own religious teachers; and on the other hand, the true beauty of the gems which shine here and there amidst the dust and rubbish of an unrestrained and disorderly accumulation is perhaps unsurpassed in other literatures. Such as it is, no book has perhaps ever produced so much history, by its influence over a raceexcepting the Bible, on which the Talmud is based.

The Talmud is, however, partly responsible for many superstitions rife among the more ignorant of the Ashkenazim and of the Oriental Jews, which are deplored by the better educated, who do not share them. These superstitions are not as a rule peculiar to themselves, but are similar to these which survive among the peasantry of other races. Some are of great antiquity, traceable to the times of the Phoenicians and the Assyrians: some are of Persian origin: some seem to have been learned among the rude Teutons and the Russians: some are universally found throughout Asia and Europe: all have their roots in that fear of chance and fate which darkens the life of the ignorant.

The Jews of the Middle Ages, and even earlier, in the first century of our era, were famous as magicians and cabbalists. The magic bowls, which they inscribed with conjurations of demons, have been recovered from the ruins of Babylon. In

Rome, they sold charms and interpreted dreams; in Antioch, the Christians resorted to them as wizards. Beliefs in magic, in cabbalistic charms, in hoards of gold turned to charcoal, in the existence of countless demons, in the evil eye, in the necessity of hiding the nail parings, in the 'hand of might' as a charm above the entrance of a house, in ghosts, in the witch spirit Lilith who steals the new born babe, in the souls which sit at night on the headstones of graves, are stil common among the lower classes of the Ashkenazim. The ceremony of the Tashlich, or placing the sins of the year on running waters, is superstitious and unauthorised. The Polish Jews believe that the souls of those who die in foreign lands are doomed to a terrible underground journey, through caverns full of snakes and monsters leading to the valley of Hinnom, where their brethren sleep in peace. A kind of fork is said to be buried with the superstitious in Poland, to assist them in digging their way to the valley of judgment. The Jewesses of Jerusalem, who carefully conceal their nail parings, and cut the nails only on lucky days of the week, are said sometimes to place a few of their hairs in some dish prepared for the husband: it being held that his love is secured when he has swallowed the hair. We might perhaps think that the result would be quite the reverse. Many of these beliefs were held by Talmudic writers, but such superstitions were denounced by the nobler spirits of every later age, as by the Hebrew prophets of earlier times.

To represent the Talmud as a mere collection of superstitions. and legends is, however, to do injustice to its noblest sayings. Rabbi Judah said, none should sit down to his own food till all the beasts that he owns are fed.' Rab said, 'men should beware lest they cause women to weep, for God counts their tears.' 'If thy wife is small, bend down to her and whisper in her ear,' is one of the Talmudic gems. 'Jerusalem was destroyed because the teaching of the young was neglected, for the world is saved by the breath of the school children.' These are but a few examples of the many wise, shrewd, and loving sayings of true masters in Israel.

A passing allusion must also be made to the ancient calumny known to the Jews as the blood accusation,' which represents

them as mingling human blood with the Passover bread. The charge was brought against them in Roman times, and commonly revived in the Middle Ages. Almost every year it embitters the Passover season, and endangers the lives of Jews even in Europe. In cities like Smyrna, Alexandria, or Salonica, and in the present year in Corfu, it has led to furious riots, and to bloodshed and massacre. Any murder committed at this season is charged against the Jews; but the malice of fanatics led to the same charge being brought by their enemies against Christians, Gnostics, Templars, and others throughout the dark ages, and its survival in the nineteenth century, shows how little advance has been made in the education of the Conti

nental peasantry. Rabbi Jehudah told a renegade Jew that repentance could only be expected by him when a dry stick of cornel wood should blossom, and lo the rod became green and budded. 'Tell me,' said Rabbi Judah, 'what good deed have you done that so outweighs your sins?' 'I remember,' said the renegade, 'that I came once to a town where the Jews were accused of murdering a child for its blood. The people knew of my coming, and said, "We will ask him who has abjured his old faith, and he will tell the truth as to the use of blood, and we will do accordingly." Then I took an oath and told them the accusation was false, and brought many proofs to my assertion of their innocence. And because of my word, many Jews were released, and they suffered nothing, whereas, had I said the contrary, all the Jews would have been murdered. This is the one good deed I remember.'

Chaucer has related the same story of accusation in the 'Prioress' Tale,' laying the scene in an Asiatic Ghetto. Matthew of Paris relates it of the Jews of Lincoln, and Richard of Devizes of the Jews of Winchester. The anti-Semites of to-day thus revive the superstitions of the Roman age, and place themselves on a level with the rabble of the Levant. The Passover is no secret ceremony. With due respect shewn, the non-Jew is allowed to be present at the supper, and knows that not even the blood of the lamb, which once formed the meat of the Feast, is now shed. Yet, notwithstanding such public celebration, the suspicions of the fanatical lower class of Eastern Europe.

and the Levant, are every year excited when the Passover season approaches.

The worst accusations that can be justly brought against the Ashkenazim are those of great want of cleanliness in person and house, and of instability in their relations to the other sex. The connection between health and cleanliness is generally unknown in the East. In Russia the Jew is probably not dirtier than the Finnish or Mongol peasant. In Syria the Moslem, however, is more cleanly than the Jew. The epidemics which sweep over the Levant are mainly due to want of sanitary cleanness, and the Jews are regarded as among the greatest sinners in this respect; the king of the fleas holds his court at Tiberias, where so many Jews are still found. To enter into details on this subject would be unpleasant, but the objection is not without importance to those who may be obliged to deal with masses of the poorer classes of the Ashkenazim.

As regards their relation to the other sex, the main evil lies in the great facility of divorce. It is regarded as disgraceful for a Jew, until he has become old, to travel alone without a wife, and it is said that in cases of long journeys marriages are sometimes made with the express understanding that a divorce will follow when the journey is ended. This is no doubt an extreme case, but the frequency with which some of the less respectable Jews change their wives is an open scandal. A badly-cooked dinner is regarded as an excuse, or even that the husband prefers another woman. So long as the wife is thus forced to live in daily terror of divorce the stability of the family life, on which depends the healthy and honest growing up of future generations, can never be attained. Such evils are countenanced neither by the Law nor by the teaching of the Rabbis, who inculcated that a man must love his wife as himself and honour her more, and that all the blessings of the home come from the wife. Jewish literature is full of the praises of good women, and Jewish women have been conspicuous in every country for their accomplishments, and even for their learning; but in the East the Oriental seclusion common to other races is also observed by the Jews. In

America the family sits together in the synagogue, but further East the women are confined to their gallery, they sit by themselves at the Passover, and veil their faces like the Moslem women. Yet the theory of the nobler Jewish writers makes woman equal to her mate, and though ascetic Rabbis have railed against the sex as loudly as the hermits of the Christian creed, they find no countenance in the Scriptures, which speak of the good wife, whose price is far above rubies.

The education of women, and the strengthening of the marriage tie, must come gradually, if the Jew of the East is to be raised to a higher level of civilization. Most of the superstitions which are so strongly prevalent among them are preserved by the mothers and nurses, and secretly believed in spite of the teaching of the educated Rabbis. Freedom, and the self-respect that grows therefrom, may do much to dispel the cloud of ancient popular errors which overshadow their beliefs.

This brief sketch of the population which is now about to be shaken loose and drifted to America, Asia, and England, may perhaps show sufficiently both the difficulties and also the capabilities with which Jewish leaders, and European statesmen, are called upon to deal. The brief historical retrospect has sufficed, perhaps, to explain the origin of the great differences which have arisen among the various Jewish stocks, and to show the indomitable energy and industry which has carried them over the whole face of the earth, and supported them under every form of persecution and discouragement. The capacity of the Jew for statesmanlike government of men has been witnessed, both among the wild Khozars of the Caucasus, and also under the rule of a Jewish Premier in Britain in our own times. If the Jew is a trader and shopkeeper rather than an agriculturist, it is because the laws imposed on him by other Lations have made him such. In countries where Jewish villages have been allowed, by Moslem rulers, Jewish farmers have worked and prospered as they do also in America. According to their own statements, there are many among them able to till the land, as they tilled it when the Mishna was written